I have spent a few hours looking online, and through the forums for this info. I cannot find any similar issues.

I am new to linux and oracle. I'm learning as I go.

when executing ./runInstaller for grid, I get to the point of selecting my candidate disks I want to use. However no disks are listed.

I have already added them with oracleasm createdisk label /dev/sdb1

With success.

I am then able to execute the following with success:
[oracle@localhost ~]$ /usr/sbin/oracleasm listdisks
ASM1
ASM2
ASM3
ASM4
ASM5
ASM6

So I know they are listed within ASM. I have tried playing with the ownership of oracleasm and running ./runInstaller as grid with the same problem. When I select new location within the installer I enter "/dev/" and the program then hangs.

You are most likely missing the oracleasmlib software package. If I remember correctly, the installer tries to use the /usr/sbin/oracleasm-discover utility, which is part of the oracleasmlib installation, which is not provided by the public yum repository or OS installation DVD.

The following should fix your problem. Then try again and the OUI installer should see the candidate disks.

When candidate disks are not detected by the installer it is often due to the ownership and permissions of the devices in /dev. They should be owned by "oracle" (as the software owner which you may have as "grid" instead) but in some circumstances can reset to root upon reboot.

Check on the ownership in /dev. Should be simple enough on sata disks. When using a SAN and multipathing technologies you sometimes need to adjust on the multipath pseudo-device instead.

Thank you Dude. I'm fairly certain this is the right solution. When I finished downloading and installing it however, I ran out of room in /tmp/ and was given an error that I have 0MB of space available. I looked about and made a new temp directory, and as a result I messed something up and was unable to re-log back in as oracle or grid.

Luckily I'm using VMware and I am creating backups before any major moves. So I'm finishing staging my computer again, and I will reply once succeeded.

With oracleasmlib installed, there is no need for the user to change the diskstring init parameter of the ASM instance since ASMLib scans for oracleasm devices using disk metadata and provides them all in a central location. All oracleasm initialized devices are stored in /dev/oracleasm and can be found using the default ORCL:* diskstring.

Thank you Dude. You were correct, that was my issue. I made the same mistake as the other user in the forum you listed. I didn't realize the asmlib wasn't included.

I ran runInstaller and it worked like a charm, however now it told me I didn't have enough space. So I have to extend my disk volume.

To the other posters- I thought the same as yourselves, and thought that I had the wrong user assigned to the directories of the drives. I checked and it stated "oinstall dba". I believe, at this point I don't recall. So I tried playing with the owners and I kept getting the same result.

I just didn't install asmlib, because I assumed it was part of the rpm found on the install disk image.